A refrigerating apparatus for carrying out a refrigeration cycle has conventionally been known, and has widely been used as an air conditioner for cooling and heating the air in a room, and a cooler such as a refrigerator, a freezer or a showcase for storing foods. As disclosed in WO98/45651, some refrigerating apparatuses of this type carry out both of an air conditioning operation and a cold storage/freezing operation. For example, a refrigerating apparatus of this type includes application side heat exchangers for two channels such as an air conditioning heat exchanger and a cooling heat exchanger for a cold storage/freezing operation, and is installed in a convenience store and the like.
Actually, in order to widely change compressor displacement in accordance with the operating status of a plurality of application side heat exchangers, a refrigerating apparatus of this type sometimes combines a plurality of compressors (compressor means) to form a compressor mechanism for a refrigerant circuit. For example, the present applicant has proposed an apparatus in which compressor mechanisms are formed by combining three compressor means, the compressor mechanisms are provided at the suction side thereof with a four-way selector valve, and the communication of four ports of the four-way selector valve is switched, thus appropriately selecting, from among the three compressor means, the compressor means to be used for an air conditioning operation and the compressor means to be used for a cold storage/freezing operation (see Japanese Patent Application No. 2001-233329 and Japanese Patent Application No. 2002-024361 that claims domestic priority therefrom, for example). More specifically, the three compressor means may all be used for a cold storage/freezing operation, or two compressor means may be used for a cold storage/freezing operation while one compressor means may be used for an air conditioning operation; namely, the above-mentioned refrigerating apparatus is formed so that when the apparatus is operated, the three compressor means are freely combined in various patterns.